Big Apple Blog

Once a month a procession of bicycles proceeds through the streets of Manhattan. The activity is referred to as Critical Mass and events like it take place all over the world.

Two years ago, the NYC Police Department starting arresting people and issuing tickets partially based upon the logic that the rides obstruct traffic. In the process, cyclists are thrown into jail and often have their bicycles impounded by the police for a period of no less than two weeks.

Every single day in Manhattan somewhere cars completely obstruct and impede the flow of traffic. Pedestrians are forced to walk between bumpers, women pushing carriages are hindered from crossing streets, and emergency vehicles are stuck behind tangled webs caused by drivers disobeying the law.

The funny thing is the police never arrest the drivers or impound their cars for obstructing traffic. The only tickets I have ever seen issued to vehicles in Manhattan are on a stretch of Riverside Drive for running red lights.

A possible bias toward the automobile? One would think so.

Picture courtesy of Gothamist

The biggest day of the year is less than 48 hours away . . . buy nothing day! Adbusters put it far more eloquently than I ever could, this comes from them:

This year’s Buy Nothing Day has a special poignancy. Never before have our emerging environmental crises been planted so firmly on the lips of the policymakers and the general public. Rather than screaming from the fringes, high-profile economists and scientists are sounding the warnings in respected journals and the halls of parliament — warnings that our oceans are dying, that the ice shelves are melting, and that we are setting ourselves up for the most massive and widest-ranging market failure the world has ever seen.

All of this points to a profound need for a shift in the way we see things. Recycling, protecting our waterways, driving hybrid cars — all the old environmental imperatives — are great, but it’s becoming obvious that they don’t address the core problem we have to change our lifestyles, we have to change our culture, and we have to consume smarter and consume less.

For a short video on the wonders of our current consumerism, click here.

And big ups to those from the Great White North for showing the best things in life don’t require Visa or MasterCard.

I must admit that the litigious nature of our society sometimes gets to me, but I was pleased to hear this morning that the White House is being sued for failing to appropriately report on the effects of global warming. The news coincides perfectly with a lecture I had the pleasure of attending last evening. Actually, it was a pleasure listening to such an eloquent and knowledgeable speaker, but by the end of the evening I must admit that I was quite depressed.

The lecture was given by Jeff Sachs. Sachs is considered to be one of the leading economists in the world and is also a mover and shaker in the community of academicians focused on global warming issues. The lecture was entitled, “Practical Approaches to Climate Change.”

For about an hour Sachs explained the science behind global warming. I do not normally associate science with horror, but I was horrified by estimates of what will occur to our planet if issues such as the reduction of fossil fuel dependency and deforestation are not addressed soon. I have gleaned over news articles that provide tidbits on the topic, but I had never before been deluged by such a concentrated amount of information on the topic. I will not get too much into the details of predictions because it would take a while and I would never do the topic justice, but if you want to delve into the subject, here’s a good place to start.

The depressing part of the lecture to me was the conclusion that in a real sense, the actions of individuals on a daily basis do not really make a difference in impacting global warming. I know this sounds harsh, but the brunt of the responsibility for global warming does not fall on individuals, it falls on governments and corporations. As an individual, please do whatever you can to conserve energy and become less dependent on fossil fuels, but turning off a light at home does not have a huge impact on how energy systems function or are regulated. Buying a hybrid is a good start, but can anyone honestly say that the auto industry is doing anything of significance to address fossil fuel dependency? The function, or perhaps more appropriately stated, dysfunction, of large systems is driven by government and corporate standards and regulations.

Thus the frustrating part is that the burden for change is really upon elected officials and corporate leaders. This is problematic because the two feed off of one another. Need help with your election campaign? I am sure corporations will be more than willing to help out, but those corporations will be sure to keep a close eye on your voting record. And what are the largest corporations? Corporations based upon energy or the expenditure of energy would be among the largest. In other words, vote in a way that keeps the economy humming along, status quo.

The primary fear of the Bush administration is how addressing global warming will affect the economy. This is certainly a valid issue, but so is the fact that Florida may disappear from the face of the earth when the polar ice caps melt. What kind of world are we going to leave for future generations?

All this to say the way to make a difference is to place pressure on both politicians and corporate leaders to address this issue – soon. Our individual actions on a daily basis might not have a huge effect on global warming, but our vote and voice can. Suing the White House? Sounds like a great way to bring the issue to the forefront.

I am sure the Bush White House feels that it is on the moral high ground in comparison to a previous President who was impeached for personal moral misconduct. I do not want to go as far as to correlate President Clinton’s misbehavior with that of the policies promoted by President Bush, but how moral is it to ignore an issue to the degree that it leads to a lawsuit against the most well known house in the world?